Members of the generational cohort born from 1934-43 were in their teens and 20s during the Fifties (1954-63, not to be confused with the the 1950s), and in their 20s and 30s during the Sixties (1964-73). Though this cohort is easily distinguished from their immediate elders (the Postmodernists, born 1924-33), William Strauss and Neil Howe lumped the two cohorts together and dismissively named them the “Silent Generation” (1925-42).

Borrowing Sartre’s slogan, coined after the Soviet invasion of Hungary, about being neither communist nor anticommunist but ”anti-anticommunist,” the American literary theorist Fredric Jameson (born on the cusp of this generation and the Postmodernists) coined the phrase “anti-anti-utopian” to describe the only form of utopianism available after the triumph of anti-utopianism during the early Cold War. Jameson claims that certain SF authors — Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin — who belong to what I’ve named the Postmodernist generation are anti-anti-utopians; he also names Samuel R. Delany, who was born in ’42. In honor of Delany, and following Jameson’s productive line of theorizing, I’ve named this generational cohort: the Anti-Anti-Utopians.

Why does Middlebrow insist on calling the 1934-43 cohort “silent,” despite all evidence to the contrary?

To Middlebrow, there are only two legitimate, and three possible modes of action. It’s legitimate to work contentedly within the status quo — though contentment might involve adjustment, as in: becoming “well-adjusted.” And it’s legitimate to agitate vociferously for reform — i.e., it’s legitimate for a group that’s been denied entrance to the middle class, or denied recognition or respect by mainstream culture, to agitate for membership, recognition, and respect. These legit modes of action are heimlich and gemütlich. Middlebrow also recognizes, and, in a guarded way, applauds a third, unheimlich (nobrow) mode of action: dropping out of the middle class and mainstream culture. The Hardboiled, Partisan, and New God generations aren’t considered “silent” because their notable members tended to adopt one of these three modes of action. Notable Postmodernists, however, regarded this tripartite model as an invisible prison, and themselves as prisoners — sullenly close-mouthed, or sneakily tunneling under the walls.

Notable members of the 1934-43 cohort weren’t silent in the same way. Although they agreed with their Partisan, New God, and Postmodernist elders that utopian blueprints are inherently totalitarian, or at least proto-totalitarian, they vociferously and articulately refused to accept the postwar consensus that there was no longer any alternative to liberal capitalism. So were they reformers? Some were, perhaps, but others simultaneously refused to renounce a utopian faith in the possibility of another world. They were neither utopian nor anti-utopian. This double-negative worldview is difficult to articulate, and nearly impossible to translate into action! It’s not as pessimistic a worldview, perhaps, as the Postmodernist vision of the liberal capitalist social order as an invisible prison — but to Partisans and New Gods, it might seem a “silent” one. Middlebrows, of course, call members of this neither-nor generation “silent” because they’d like to muzzle their canniest foes.

Trial scene from Bananas

Woody Allen is an avatar of this neither-nor generation, which (most notably during the Sixties) looked upon the competing ideologies and discourses of older and younger generations with a Postmodernist’s detachment, yet which was also ferociously idealistic and outspoken. Allen’s comedies of the Sixties (1964-73), particularly Bananas, Sleeper, and Love and Death, seriously critique the excesses of the Establishment and the revolutionary underground alike. Thomas Pynchon’s entire oeuvre also criticizes both the Establishment and the revolutionary underground, or counterculture.

John Lennon’s “Revolution” also has an idealistic neither-nor message: “When you talk about destruction/Don’t you know that you can count me out (in).” Bob Dylan’s refusal to conform to the New God-era model of a folk singer might be considered an idealistic neither/nor mode of action.

Eldridge Cleaver articulated a version of this non-reformist utopianism when he told an interviewer: “I believe that there are two Americas. There is the America of the American dream, and there is the America of the American nightmare. I feel that I am a citizen of the American dream, and that the revolutionary struggle of which I am a part is a struggle against the American nightmare, which is the present reality.”

And then there’s Bruce Lee’s neither-nor fighting style. “Styles require adjustment, partiality, denials, condensation, and a lot of self-justification,” he wrote, in one of his philosophical martial arts treatises. “The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no style at all. He lives only in what is.”

***

If Middlebrow is forever working to naturalize the unnatural, eternalize the temporary, and make the contingent seem inevitable, performance art does the opposite. Performance art is an anti-middlebrow artform, one which (in more or less compelling and engaging ways) signals the artist’s rejection of the terms and conditions of modern life by treating everyday reality as though it were theater. Performance art emerged in the Sixties with the work of Postmodernist artists such as Yves Klein, Wolf Vostell, and Allan Kaprow, as well as Anti-Anti-Utopian artists like Vito Acconci (pictured below, in a 1970 performance), Hermann Nitsch, Carolee Schneemann, and honorary Anti-Anti-Utopian Yoko Ono. (Joseph Beuys is a New God, which explains why he fell out with Fluxus, if you ask me; and Chris Burden is Blank Generation.) Gilbert and George are also Anti-Anti-Utopians.

Middlebrows despise performance art, and mock it viciously whenever possible. Two years ago this month, for example, when Star Simpson, an electrical engineering major at MIT, was arrested for innocently walking into Boston’s Logan Airport (where she was meeting her boyfriend’s plane) wearing a sweatshirt adorned with a plastic circuit board on which a handful of glowing green lights in the shape of a star were wired to a 9-volt battery, middlebrow pundits snarkily accused Simpson of the crime of performance art.

The Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby described Simpson’s actions as a “public display,” an “immature stunt,” and a “juvenile prank.” Meanwhile, Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr wrote: “The First Amendment does not give you the right to yell fire in a crowded theater. Or don’t bring what looks like a bomb into Logan Airport….” Carr’s Herald colleage Peter Gelzinis scoffed: “Maybe Star Anna Simpson thought she could saunter through Logan and return to Cambridge with a helluva tale about how no one said a word to her.” The Herald’s Michele McPhee agreed 110%: “There is absolutely nothing artistic about scaring people in public places.”

Star Simpson's sweatshirt

A blogger at the grassroots-conservative website Free Republic, sarcastically ventriloquizing (nonexistent) supporters of Simpson’s (unintentional) performance art, articulated the anxiety expressed in slightly more subtle ways by these middlebrow critics: “Lighten up! It was performance art, everybody! It was a brilliant illustration of the gestapo tactics of the Bush Administration to any law-abiding citizen strolling through an airport with something that looks like a bomb…. It was a stunning performance and I hope she gets an ‘A.'” Though Simpson wasn’t doing any such thing, middlebrows are apparently so afraid that a performance artist might succeed in waking us up to the possibility of radical change that they responded instinctively with a tsunami of mocking hostility.

I claimed, above, that Anti-Anti-Utopians are easily distinguishable from their immediate elders, the Postmoderns. But I went on to note that Anti-Anti-Utopians looked upon the competing ideologies and discourses of New Gods, Partisans, and Blanks with a Postmodernist’s detachment. Though certain influential Anti-Anti-Utopians can be called performance artists (whether or not they called themselves that), the performance art of the Sixties was pioneered in part by Postmodernists. So how, exactly, are the Anti-Anti-Utopians distinct, as a generation, from the Postmodernist cohort?

Compare Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Thomas McGuane, John Kennedy Toole, and Hunter S. Thompson, all of whom were born from 1934-43, to similar novelists from the preceding generation: John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, William Gass, E.L. Doctorow. OK, Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse is pretty amusing, but in general, Anti-Antis are funnier — not less serious, but perhaps less earnest — than Postmodernists. They derive an unseemly amount of anarchistic amusement from the tensions, uncertainties, and paradoxes of postwar American life. It’s for this reason that I’ve named Philip Roth (born in the cusp year 1933) an honorary Anti-Anti.

Anti-Antis didn’t consider themselves postmodern; they were generally less pessimistic than Postmodernists; and even though they were unwilling to articulate what utopia might look like, their anti-anti-utopianism expressed a hopefulness not seen since the Modernists. Speaking of whom, it seems fair to say that Woody Allen rebooted Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx; John Lennon and Yoko Ono — Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings; Michael Moorcock — H.P. Lovecraft; R. Crumb — Henry Miller; Samuel R. Delany and Margaret Atwood — Olaf Stapledon, Karel Čapek, Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Meanwhile, the Yippies (Hoffman), Merry Pranksters (Kesey), even the Beatles (Lennon) can be seen as dissensual organizations of talented misfits — like Dada, or D.H. Lawrence’s plan for the colony of Rananim. Such Argonaut Follies are non-totalizing organizations that serve as inspirations for an un-blueprintable utopian society.

***

The Sixties (1964-73) belonged to the Anti-Anti-Utopians. When we think of the Sixties, we think of feminists (Gloria Steinem), Yippies (Abbie Hoffman), Black Panthers (Eldridge Cleaver), gentle bearded freaks (Jim Henson) and violent ones (Charles Manson, Theodore Kaczynski), gonzo journalists and far-out novelists (Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon). The Sixties were about the films of Woody Allen; the comedy of George Carlin and Richard Pryor; and the songwriting of Gerry Goffin, Sonny Bono, and Carole King. All of whom were Anti-Anti-Utopians.

Pop music in the Sixties was an Anti-Anti-Utopian thing. That era saw the triumphant comeback of Elvis; the success of soul and funk (Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Tina Turner, George Clinton, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes); and the apotheosis of folk and folk rock (Joan Baez; Bob Dylan; Joni Mitchell; Peter, Paul & Mary; also members of the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, The Byrds, The Grateful Dead). The world-historical triumph of rock, of course, was also a Sixties phenomenon: Besides the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, members of The Doors, The Velvet Underground, The Beach Boys, and Jefferson Airplane were born from 1934-43; so were Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Captain Beefheart, and Frank Zappa.

To the extent that the Blank Generation wants to claim the Sixties as its own, it must be replied that they mostly went along for the ride. The modes that we associate with Blanks during the Sixties — i.e., dropping out of the middle class and mainstream culture, or vociferously agitating for reform (as opposed to insisting, anarchistically, that another world is possible) — are ones that Middlebrow encourages and applauds. As for the Blanks’ antiwar activism, well, one of their leaders — John Kerry — was born on the cusp of the two generations. The March on the Pentagon was organized by older pacifists; and Hoffman organized the “levitation” stunt. Also, Blank Generation activism ceased once the draft ended. ‘Nuff said.

The generational schematic is becoming more and more intriguing with every entry, Josh!

May I modestly propose a possible addition: Giorgio Agamben, philosopher, born in Italy in 1942. Among the ideas he develops that fit very well within your rendering of the anti-anti-utopian: the so-called “Appelian Cut” that formulates situations in terms of “neither x nor y”, a discussion of inoperability as a key social/political strategy (he cites Bartleby as an examplary case, but not in any simplistic fashion), an idea of a coming community that is not inscribed in identity, a critical account of sovereignty and power that is one part Foucault and another Arendt, and an elaboration of exceptional states grounding the deployment of government power. It’s a simplistic account, forgive me, but I thought I’d bring him to your attention. Agamben’s thought is currently witnessing a wave of popularity and criticism in the American academy. While it’s certainly an opportunity, this phenomenon also increases the chances of misreadings – productive or otherwise. Regardless of his fawning reception by the academy and established scholarship, the themes he touches upon fit the times. Along with a couple of others (Oscar Zeta Acosta and Herman Melville), I want to write a Hilo Hero for the guy at some point.

Speaking of Zeta Acosta: he was Hunter Thompson’s Dr. Gonzo- a Chicano disguised as a 300 lb. Samoan- he was born in 1935, and wrestled with the ideas of utopias in his preaching, legal work, writing, prolific appetites, and his run for L.A. County Sheriff. This antipodal tipo also belongs in the list, in my opinion.

Dude — I left out Agamben? I suck — thanks for making this smart argument. Where can we read more about the “Appelian Cut”? Also — thanks for Zeta Acosta. You should write about both of these Anti-Antis for us.

The account of the Cut of Apelles appears in his work on St. Paul “The Time That Remains”. (My memory totally botched it the first time around…).

Also, another possible anti-anti that I just scoped out out of curiosity: Gloria Anzaldua, also born in 1942. She wrote one of the classics of Chican@ lit: “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza”. Another exploration of identity and the life as lived in-between.

If you’d like, I can draw up a quick paragraph on them for use sometime down the line. Though I would have to dig up Agamben’s birthday somewhere. I would just need to squeeze in some time for these.

Added her, thanks! Yes — one thing I do not get into here is the discovery of ethnicity by the Anti-Antis. Angela Davis’s iconic afro. Abbie Hoffman adopting his more Jewish nickname instead of his proper name, Abbot, which he’d used through the Fifties. And so forth. Middlebrow loves ethnic “flavor,” so it’s a complex subject about to which write, and I didn’t want to tackle it in this limited space. I once wrote on this topic for Bostonia Magazine — in a review of Marilyn Halter’s Shopping for Identity — but it seems to have vanished.

There is that Middlebrow taste for the neutered exotic, isn’t there? So palpable yet so bland! Spicy! Happy-go-lucky! Carefree! Ay ay ay!!! The middlebrow conception seems a pale, less aggressive, reflection of Al Capp’s Schmoo. (This very quickly calls to mind current conservative assumptions being played out in the media on race, ethnicity, and suspicious political affinities, but that’s another matter.)

I like that line of thought, the anti-anti discovery of ethnicity. And I’m with you on how complex it is to write on ethnicity. It’s tied up with all kinds of questions of identity, political belonging, morality, and first-order conceptions of human nature that some of these anti-antis are concerned with.

As a Recon, I never made the connection that the majority of my idols are the anti-anti-utopians – being my parents generation. I always thought my parents were a little off because they were both immigrants but when you put it in this context, it makes a little more sense that they “derive[d] an unseemly amount of anarchistic amusement from the tensions, uncertainties, and paradoxes of postwar American life”.

On March 15 (2013), Jennifer Szalai wrote the following passages, in a NYTBR review of a reissue of two Renata Adler novels. She talks about the generational perspective of Adler (born 1938) and Joan Didion (born 1934):

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” Joan Didion wrote in “The White Album.” She was describing a time when she started to doubt the stories she had told herself, seeing instead “images with no ‘meaning’ beyond their temporary arrangement, not a movie but a cutting-room experience.” “The White Album” was published in 1979, three years after “Speedboat” and four years before “Pitch Dark.” By then, the myth of a postwar consensus, a Great Prosperity idyll of upward mobility and money for ice cream, had given way to the brute facts of Vietnam and Watergate and stagflation. In an introduction to one of her essay collections, “Toward a Radical Middle,” Adler recalls “the bland repressions” of the early postwar years, when “everyone looked alike or tried to.” But she has little patience for what she calls the “mentality of the apocalypse” that ensued: “mindless, random, dumb, a ­nonnegotiable demand to dismantle the human experiment and begin again.”

Adler and Didion were both children during the Second World War, and they have since written about the peculiarities of their generation, “distrustful of political highs” (Didion) and “the first age group to experience the end of the Just War as a romantic possibility” (Adler). “Things have changed very much, several times, since I grew up,” Jen Fain says, near the beginning of “Speedboat.”

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